The landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was established to truthfully address the atrocities that Canadian Aboriginal Peoples endured during the residential school era as well as the ongoing unresolved traumas passed down generationally.This process brings hope and promise to revitalize the relationship between Aboriginal and First Nations peoples and settler descendants of Canada. We will look at what has worked and what hasn’t, and what we can do to begin such a process in the USA. With:Eriel Deranger (Chipeweyan First Nations), Melina Laboucan-Massimo (Lubicon Cree First Nation), Clayton Thomas-Muller (Colomb Cree First Nation), Tara Houska (Anishinaabe-Couchiching First Nation), and Jeff Baker (Metis) and Joanne Barker (Lenape)

Jeff Baker, Ph.D., a Métis educator whose teaching and research seek to decolonize educational institutions through land-based learning and the respectful inclusion of Indigenous languages and ways of knowing, is the Chair of Aboriginal Education at the University of Saskatchewan, where he explores the intersection of Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge systems for catalyzing the emergence of more equitable and sustainable ways... Read More →

Joanne Barker (Lenape), an enrolled member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, is a professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State. She is the author of Native Acts: Law, Recognition, and Cultural Authenticity and the editor of: Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies; andSovereignty Matters; as well as many papers and articles.

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, a Dene Indigenous activist, member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) of Alberta, Canada, is the ACFN's Communications Coordinator, whose work is focused on resisting the devastation of the Alberta Tar Sands and fighting for her people's rights. Eriel has also worked extensively on international Indigenous rights issues, and she currently serves on Bioneers' Board of Directors.

Tara Houska (Couchiching First Nation) is the National Campaigns Director of Honor the Earth, a tribal attorney, an advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign, and a co-founder of Not Your Mascots. She is involved in advocacy on a broad spectrum of issues facing indigenous communities, with a focus on environmental justice, traditional knowledge, protection of sacred sites, and institutional racism.

Melina Laboucan-Massimo (Lubicon Cree from Alberta, Canada) has worked on social, environmental and climate justice issues for 15 years in Brazil, Australia, Mexico, and Canada focusing on resource extraction, media literacy and Indigenous rights. For the last 9 years Melina has worked against tar sands expansion as a Climate & Energy campaigner with Greenpeace and the Indigenous Environmental Network, and also serves as a board member for... Read More →

Clayton Thomas-Muller, a member of Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, is a Winnipeg-based Indigenous rights activist, the Indigenous Extreme Energy Campaigner with 350.org and an organizer for Defenders of the Land and Idle No More. He has campaigned across Canada, Alaska and the lower 48 in hundreds of Indigenous communities to organize against the encroachments of the fossil fuel industry and the banks that finance them.